Leo XIV And Donald Trump - The Pope Wears Out His Prayer Kneeler But Remains Clueless

'Excommunicate him!' said Leo to his aide-de-camp and closet advisor, Cardinal Emil Lefferts of Belgium, a man steeped in His Holiness' principles of world peace and civil order.  Lefferts had been Leo's counselor and friend for over three decades and knew the Pope's sentiments and convictions. 

'If only it were possible, Holy Father', replied Lefferts. 'Would that the admonitions of Our Lord and Savior applied to all faiths, not just Catholics'. 

Here the Cardinal smoothed the folds on his robes, cleared his throat, and quickly added, 'Well, of course the Lord's heavenly rule applies to all those on earth, even those who have not come to his ministry'. 

'Never mind all that', the Pope retorted.  'I want Trump!'

Stalin when asked if he feared Pius XII who had publicly threated him, said 'How many divisions does the Pope have?'.  The days of Urban I, the Crusades, Pope Gregory VII were long gone Stalin knew.  

The Catholic Church despite its large membership had lost its clout and cojones.  Today in the era of Francis and Leo, it was but a shadow of its former self.  As much as Leo might invoke the name of the Lord and urge Catholics to resist the amoral, anti-Christian actions of the President of the United States, he would just be whistlin' Dixie.

There was a time earlier in the Trump presidency that Leo saw a possible partnership with the president.  Both reviled homosexuality, transgenderism, and the deification of feminist harridans who defiled the Virgin Mary in their assault on traditional marriage.  

In fact he had reached out to Trump on more than one occasion saying that their stars were aligned and that church and state were on the same righteous road. 

But the hoped-for partnership was short-lived.  Trump's capitalist juggernaut, unleashing the private sector, further distorting income inequality, and ushering in an era of Robber Baron wealth on the backs of the poor slammed that door.  What had Leo's decades of selfless work among Peruvian poor produced? The world led by this emperor of wealth, this economic tyrant had given lie to his - and Jesus' work among the less fortunate.  

When Leo had spoken to Trump about this, he got this terse reply, 'Get a job'; and from that moment on, despite the gay thing, he knew that they were on opposite sides of the fence. 

'But this', stammered Leo, referring to the bombs dropped on Tehran, 'is enough.  It cannot stand.  War can never be the solution' and with that he knelt in his own private chapel to quiet his nerves and seek support and guidance from Jesus Christ. 

'Bless me, O Lord, your faithful servant, what am I do do?'.  He looked up at the mournful yet beatific face of Jesus on the cross, and shook his head. 'I am at the end of my rope', he prayed, returning as he was accustomed to the American idiom which after years laboring in the Lord's foreign vineyards he had never lost. 

'Take the gloves off', said Cardinal Lefferts waiting for the Pope as he finished his oblations. 'Man up' and an hour later gave Leo a draft of an oration he wanted him to deliver. 

In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, I condemn Donald Trump's brutality, inhuman horror, and murderous assault on Iran.  In the name of God I expel him from the community of the faithful communicants of Our Lord.  He is a moral reprobate, a spiritual charlatan, a fraud. 

 

'That'll show him we mean business', Lefferts proudly said; but the Pope was worried by the overt hostility of the language.  Lefferts was using the same bilious ad hominem, scurrilous words that Trump himself had used.

'No', said Leo. 'We must be charitable in our response'. 

'Forgive me, Holy Father, for being so blunt; but the man is a prick, pure and simple, and may God forgive my language but facts are facts’.

Leo and Lefferts were not only old friends but bro's who hung out at the Cafe des Deux Magots on the Left Bank and had gotten pissed together on French rotgut and shouted obscenities at the tippy-toeing dandies walking by.  We were men then and we are men now, the Cardinal reminded Leo. 

'Let's wait and see, Emmy', he said to Lefferts.  'The world will heed my prayers'. 

But the world never did.  Instead the Vatican and Leo personally were charged with hypocrisy. When he made this disingenuous statement, 'God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war', Pope Leo conveniently ignored Catholic history. 

The Crusades were not just armies of the West marching to Jerusalem to rid the Holy City of its Muslim infidel; but a militant statement of the power, glory, and rightful place of Christianity in the world.  They were no different from the marauding armies of Genghis Khan who rode out of the steppes with a hundred thousand horsemen, laid waste to and then conquered the world from Europe to Asia.  

They were the instruments of God’s will, and as such they would be unstoppable.  Over a period of two hundred years, three Crusades marched out of Europe to the East, each to be the final one, the scattering of Islam and the establishment of the one true church. 

The War of the Eight Saints (1375–1378)  arose between Pope Gregory XI and the Italian city-state of Florence, which opposed papal expansion in central Italy. The war was marked by Florence inciting revolts in the Papal States and the Pope retaliating with military action. The war ended with a compromise peace in 1378, contributing to the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome.

The Holy Roman Empire - Papacy Wars primarily occurring from the 11th to the 13th centuries stemmed from power struggles between the German emperors and the papacy, particularly over the issue of lay investiture. Key events included the Investiture Controversy, where popes sought to establish ecclesiastical independence from imperial authority. Significant battles and political maneuvers characterized this period, culminating in the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which sought to delineate the roles of church and state.

 

This historical ignorance was just the most obvious reason critics wondered whether the new Pope had come loose from his moorings. His deliberate omission of the intricate philosophical debates concerning the nature of just wars is nothing more than political grandstanding, a thinly-veiled criticism of the American war in Iran. 

Worse was ignorance of the Old Testament, a chronicle of the militant victory of the Jews over the infidels of Jericho and the slaughter of tribes opposing Moses and his thousands of Egyptian Jewish refugees fleeing Pharoah. The very foundations of monotheism and Judeo-Christian values was a result of that armed assault. 

'God is on the side of peace', wrote Leo in a press release designed to deflect the surprising turnabout. 'Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, Colossians 3:1'; but that treacly response only spawned a viral caricature.  

Social media were filled with hilarious cartoons of the vacant, hopelessly idealistic, mooning former priest.  It was a circus, a clown show, a vaudevillian Borscht Belt jamboree.  Never had a pope looked so ridiculous. 

'Don't let him see them', Lefferts told his media advisor.  'Keep the bloody things away from the Pontifical chambers', but papal authority cannot be denied and upon request a dossier of political cartoons was assembled for the Holy Father. 

'Good gracious', Leo said. 'Is that what they think of me' and went into a funk, back to his private chapel, on his knees again but this time asking the Lord to explain it all to him.  He banged away at his rosary, made the sign of the cross a hundred times, bowed and scraped in abject obeisance, but nothing.  The cartoons did not go away. 

It is a sorry spectacle indeed to see this clueless man doddering around the Vatican in his red slippers trying to find his way.  Portraits of the great popes of the past hang on the walls just like the tsars of Russia in the Winter Palace - the popes with power, agency, and might - and as he looked up at them, Leo wondered what had happened. 

 'Here I am Pope Leo XIV with all the regalia of office, the golden staff, the miter, the silken robes, and a direct line to Jesus Christ himself, and I don't know what's what'.  And with that morose thought he indulged himself with a baloney sandwich on white bread with Gulden's mustard.